Cloud Nine
by SeungSeiRan
Summary: Feeling is rarely the equivalent to believing. Naruto x Ino.


Disclaimer: Naruto and its respective characters are property of Masashi Kishimoto.

* * *

She knows she isn't the least bit like him. _No_.

Not at all.

Untangle limbs. Check. Rinse mouth. Check. Smoothen hair. Check. Pick up clothes. Check. Don't wake him up. Ch –

"Ino?"

A disheveled head of dirty gold, a torso smattered with her perfume, props him up in bed. He stretches, a feline yawn escaping but she wonders at this point if the description is less than appropriate. Something more canine perhaps. Drooping whisker marks and the dawning realization that he was being abandoned this early in the morning. A kit lost in bewilderment at how the night had begun, not how it ended.

"This never happened."

They would always be friends for better or worse, richer or poorer, in life or death, always always always and there, you see, was the problem, the root if it all and it was really all the same…

And then she's out the window, cool air and a twinge of guilt raising the hairs on the back of her neck.

* * *

There had been no doubt that Ino Yamanaka would make the most unorthodox bride. Better yet, the groom-to-be was a stranger to their circle. A young promising ANBU member, this boy, a Shigeru Tadashi, came from a respectable enough background. The Yamanakas hadn't been particular about pedigree themselves.

"So why, Ino?"

She had come to dread these breaks in routine, when they were allowed to sit on the branches between the changing of shifts and swallow mouthfuls of lukewarm coffee or strong tea from their hip-flasks. _Sake_ had been prohibited from patrols too late for them. Too late to stop what they couldn't remember starting. Because really now, her ideal was preferably tall, dark and, once upon a time, an Uchiha. Ages grew by numbers, wisdom in years, but Ino still couldn't let go of that dream. That illusion.

When he'd deemed her silence as enough of an answer, Naruto glanced askance at a spot in the bark, peering sideways through his mask. They were always commissioned in porcelain, these ANBU ones. Hear the sound of another smashing and a ninja would always know his was safe for the moment.

"Since when did you stop calling me 'Ino-san'?"

"When did I start calling you 'Ino'?" he countered, delighted that he'd found another beginning to her conclusion. There was always one as far as he was concerned. For all the moments of mutual bonding, genuine affection that had been born so late into years of acquaintance, for even that one night in his quarters, there had been a chance. A failed fire, the sparks dampened by circumstances.

"Was it when you first made the squad? Or when Sakura told you she wasn't ready to follow you?"

He snorted at the memory and it seemed to confirm all what she'd suspected for so long. In an endless river, even the most secure rafts could break apart until the logs made their own way down the path. She had grown accustomed to the sight of blood on her hands and the pitch-dead silence that followed an ambush. But severed bonds and wasting friendships were another matter.

He'd once asked her to run off with him to someplace nice with plenty of sun where they could see the sea. From then on, the words ebbed away to a soft warm blur, making her realize that she'd been just as drunk.

It was a clear cloudless day. Shikamaru wouldn't be pleased at the lack of distraction. She tried to picture the shapes her friend would have seen, had he been free of the burden piled on by imminent duty. Her mind played around with silhouettes cut in azure, only to prove fruitless in shaping anything but the confusion reflected in a pair of eyes during one particular morning after.

Of course, there was also the apology.

The _forgotten_ apology.

"You know, Naruto, Tadashi-san said I wouldn't have to stay in ANBU after… you know? But I didn't."

"Telling me something?"

"You shouldn't wink at an engaged woman, Naruto." She laughed to take the edge off. "By most standards, I'd be allowed to hit you for that."

"Do it."

She blinked. The mask had inched closer to her, the face behind it set in earnest. "Do it, Ino."

"Honestly…"

"Then maybe I'll wake up and this will all be a dream."

His disappearing act was getting better and better, she thought, as he left her to sit alone on her perch. The coffee cooled by the hour at her hip, neglected by a sun that was content to fade to obscurity.

* * *

She knows she isn't like him. _Not at all_.

She never will be.

Life must love irony. Here she is, reduced to making the best use of her stealth to traipse into a man's bedroom. One whom she isn't the perfect match, one whom irony loves with a will. Never has the dark felt so heavy. A cloak for her misgivings, if comfort serves both of them well. For love hasn't and illusions wholly love company.

"Naruto?"

Like before, she doesn't wait for an answer before slipping in underneath the covers and wrapping her arms around his waist. A tense moment, a skipped beat, but he slides back against her with a sigh. Nothing needful, nothing carnal but he fits perfectly within her the circle ending at her wrists. The sun can burn itself and everything else out for all they can care.

"What time – "

"Noon."

They have exactly twelve hours from the minute.

And they could run away, fly off like those figurative birds in haiku rhymes. They could shatter hearts that aren't theirs for a change. After all, wasn't destruction one of their kind's many specialties?

"It wasn't a waste of time." She asserted (and hadn't she been graded well on that?). Her cheek against the sharp rise of his shoulder-blade, she could feel every skeletal twitch in his muscles. "Wasn't it?"

He returns her former silence. A last attempt at petty payback. Lover's tiff? She wished.

Her wedding kimono is white and pink and gold, the rainbow of a fairytale. When the sash is untied, it shall fall to the floor in a heap of silk and lace. What's undone cannot be done up in the span of a night.

When she leaves, Ino packs in her treasure trove of pretty tales and leaps out in silence.


End file.
